


golden golden golden as i open my eyes

by philthestone



Series: nursery 'verse [16]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, look its the solo kids' world and we're all just living in it ok, they were going to go into a different fic and that just didnt happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22370437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: She used to leave the room whenever he showed up -- after Endor, she found him hovering over Luke in the medical tent, moving to brush his hair away from his sleeping face as if aghosteven could -- and then, when the twins were born, she’d hobbled back to the birthing room from the ‘fresher only to realize he was there, in the corner, whispering a silent prayer for protection in a language she didn’t recognize.She had been bone-deep angry the first time; afraid, the second. When she was carrying Nik and her dreams were plagued by a blue-eyed child in the desert -- angry again.This time she's not surewhatshe feels.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Anakin Skywalker, Leia Organa/Han Solo
Series: nursery 'verse [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/217331
Comments: 19
Kudos: 116





	golden golden golden as i open my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> this is a rewrite of the former "and then the sun came up" which was a brave attempt at something but retrospectively did not do anything i wanted it to. w the turn of the decade we've found ourselves neck deep in nursery verse again, it seems.
> 
> arguably, while all these fics are part of the same universe, this fic falls into place most closely with "there in the space full of words" and "more than a string of letters" -- and, hopefully soon, another companion piece.
> 
> title is from harry styles, not for the song itself but for its energy

Leia stands in the Falcon’s cockpit, motionless. She’s not entirely sure if this is a dream or she’s really here. On the one hand, she’s had irritating, vaguely unwanted dreams of him before. On the other -- well. She does distinctly remember getting out of bed at some point. Really long hyperspace jumps always give her mild insomnia.

She takes two steps over, brittle, and perches herself on the arm of the copilot’s chair. He taps his gloved fingers against the dashboard. Leia sniffs, sharply. She really hates how much they look like him, sometimes.

(Luke’s chin and eyes and eyebrows and then there’s her own mouth and the  _ nose _ \--)

“You’re not going to throw me out,” he says, quiet in his surprise. She can see the faint blue light outlining the hard edges of his figure, a silent reminder of his intangibility but mixed with the unnerving youthfulness of him -- broad shoulders, there, and long legs, and a litheful warrior's grace that puts her off. The scar, especially -- Leia doesn't know. It's a reminder that he lived a life, real and complicated as that of the rest of them. 

But then, his comment -- his words are a question spliced with a statement spliced with a tenderness that has slowly, over the past ten years, unwarped.

That doesn’t mean it’s _welcome_.

“I’ve given up trying,” Leia snaps. She shifts in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest. In this dream that might not be a dream, she's wearing one of Han's old shirts over her pajamas, but it is thin and worn and not doing much to fight off the cold of space. The young man in front of her does not seem put off by her tone. If anything, he's amused, and gently so.

"Not very like you," he notes.

Leia's lip curls; it's easy to match his casual tone with flippancy. "Because you know me so well."

There's a spark deep in the blue of his eye, which is familiar and discomfiting all at once. She knows that spark. She craves that spark, at intervals. That deep sense of being known -- of belonging in a way that sits miles beneath your skin. It's like Luke, all over again. Leia's had years to come to terms with her own impulse towards it, but the passage of time has not quite done enough to quell -- everything else.

He smiles, still with that boyish familiarity, like he's caught her out. "Shouldn't I?"

She used to leave the room whenever he showed up -- after Endor, she found him hovering over Luke in the medical tent, moving to brush his hair away from his sleeping face as if a ghost even  _ could _ \-- and then, when the twins were born, she’d hobbled back to the birthing room from the ‘fresher only to realize he was there, in the corner, whispering a silent prayer for protection in a language she didn’t recognize. 

She had been bone-deep angry the first time; afraid, the second. When she was carrying Nik and her dreams were plagued by a blue-eyed child in the desert -- angry again.

How dare he? After everything -- how  _ dare _ he --

“You know those dreams were not my doing,” he says easily now, into the silence of the cockpit. 

Leia stiffens. “I suppose you think that’s very generous of you.”

“Leia --”

“ _ Don’t _ .” She knows they were of herself. Of her grandmother, even, perhaps. She’s learned a lot about her family in the past ten years. Still -- it rankles, that he has not shown up in so long, never tried to explain himself. It feels as though they've had this conversation a hundred times, but they haven't really. Not since Nik’s birth -- and even then, he never really tried to talk back. Nor with the twins, either -- only ever that first moment, with Luke, right after the peak of it all.

She hadn’t wanted to hear it. Even now --  _ even  _ now. A part of her still doesn’t.

She presses two fingers to her temple.

“I don’t -- Force, why are you  _ here _ .”

Anakin raises an eloquent eyebrow at her. “It's not anything out of the ordinary.”

She knows -- it isn’t. The cruel irony of his unquestionably protective Force presence in the childrens’ lives is not lost on her. Mostly she deals with it by pretending it’s not there.

“Isn’t it?”

“I thought I wasn’t welcome with you.”

“Has that stopped you before?”

“If I’m not here because you asked for me, then the reasonable answer is that I’m here because I care.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I wouldn’t dare, princess.” Her head jerks up in surprise at the change in tone -- sharp, caustic, a near-duplicate of her own tendencies. Anakin shrugs at her, half a grin in his voice. “I’d like to think I wasn’t so great a fool as to miss how formidable you were, Leia, even then.”

It’s the pride in his voice that sets her off, she thinks.

“Don’t you dare,” she says, suddenly spitting. The armrest is digging into the underneaths of her thighs. “Don’t you  _ dare _ \--  _ even then _ ?!” 

She watches the smile slip away, his face pale under the blue. He flinches at the parroted words, graceful, boyish composure broken. She thinks,  _ good _ , wildly, vindictively. 

“How can you just -- just  _ sit _ there -- after everything --”

“Leia --”

“You let them torture me,” she says, trembling, “you tortured my husband. You hurt Luke -- you  _ hurt _ Luke, in so many ways, I can’t -- and more than that,” the subject flips, because there is so much to be said on each point that she cannot manage it all even though they have been over every minute point before -- “you were never my friend,  _ never _ , not once, all those years, even though I  _ knew _ you --” unstoppable now, a freight train of hurt as she rises from her seat with the stability of a leaf, “you  _ respected _ me in the senate, any fool could see it and I even let myself  _ like _ you for it underneath it all but then you turned and stood there and  _ let them  _ and you  _ never _ realized  _ who I was _ !”

She notices that tears are spilling freely down her cheeks. She finds she doesn’t much care. For all their talk of knowing -- 

Anakin remains silent. Leia wonders if he’s heard some of this before -- if he has been able to hear every scream and yell and accusation that she has flung at the open sky on his behalf. Suddenly, unnervingly, she feels that he has. She does not want to call it gratifying; he could have been ignoring her. But something about the heartbreak in his face, with those features that are her own, makes her feel he was not. 

She was never really glaring -- anguish is too heady for such an expression -- but if she was, it falters now.

“Leia,” he repeats, finally, in the softest of voices. It -- his voice. It reminds her of Luke’s.

She doesn't know what she is expecting -- perhaps for him to beg. But that's ludicrous the moment she thinks it; would _she_ beg? He is simply there. Him and his eyes, so blue and older than his deceptively youthful form -- so similar, yet so different to those of her brother and youngest son. And her name. And his actions. That fierce, protective, unwavering force, over two decades too late.

Leia’s throat works over itself.

_ I’m sorry only matters when it’s in your actions not your words, _ she’s repeated to her often wayward children. Textbook child-friendly moral ethicism. 

“I’m tired,” she says, voice clogged with tears. “I’m so tired, of this.” 

“You don’t have to forgive me,” Anakin whispers. She stares at him, for a long moment, and then at the rest of the empty, silent cockpit. She takes a step, and then two, and then is sitting in the captain’s seat, her head resting against the back. She is about eye-level with him, and his dashboard perch. 

“I know,” says Leia. “Can you -- tell me about mom?”

Anakin’s expression crumbles into something achingly gentle so quickly it is almost a violent change. “Yes,” he says, voice caught and tinged with desperation. “Yes, yeah -- she --” Inhale. He stops himself, swallows, and says first, with a small, small smile that makes her chest ache: “You named your kid after me.”

The tears come again, fast and hot against her cheeks, but there’s an odd smile pressing against her teeth. Something in her heart untwists.

“Yes,” she says, voice wavering. “Yes, we did.”

She ignores his amused grin at her deliberate use of the word  _ we _ and prompts, “Mom?” His face lights up. There is a moment, as he begins to talk, that she thinks she sees tears glitter against his cheek, muted by the soft blue around him.

  
  


Leia wakes up with Han’s leg flung across her thigh and that odd, leisurely feeling that she’s come to associate over the years with sleeping in hotels, or at other people’s houses. She exhales and blinks her eyes open, breathes in the smell of the bed, feels the soft sheets under her fingers.

A beat. Two.

She is suddenly aware of the unfamiliar background sounds that must have woken her: the muffled clamor of miscellaneous flora and fauna, chirps and twitters and the winds rustling in the trees just beyond the walls of their bedroom. The air is humid and warm but  _ fresh _ , breathable, nothing like the thick, roiling fog that can seep through Coruscant on the bad days, in the silent hours of the night, heavy and polluted. She rolls over onto her back and closes her eyes again just as a heavy arm drapes itself over her midriff.

“’S too early,” Han says into her neck, voice muffled. Leia turns into his sleepy embrace, not opening her eyes.

“Sorry I woke you,” she whispers.

Han responds by tightening his arm around her slightly and burying his face further into her neck. His hair tickles her ears, limbs are still heavy with sleep. Leia can feel his heartbeat against her shoulder, soft and steady.

“You sleep okay?”

“Hmmm?”

“Heard -- dunno. Voices.”

“Yes,” she says, turning her cheek to press her lips against his forehead.

“Mm,” says Han, toeing the line between sleep and wakefulness. Something in his tone makes her feel it’ll be brought up again, but not as a whole conversation. Her heart tightens then loosens in equal measure, and remains loose, full of air.

She hums in the back of her throat and shifts against the pillows. She focuses: on the twittering sounds outside their windows, and their flight here, about the boxes in the other rooms and the buttery light she can see flooding through the transparisteel window on the side of their room. She marvels, at the light, floaty feeling in her chest –

She inhales deeply and closes her eyes, ready to slip back into sleep and not wake up until the sun is high up in the sky because today she  _ can, _ when she feels her husband’s lips press against the hollow of her throat.

Leia smiles and pokes his calf with her toes, flipping over onto her shoulder to face him. Han’s eyes are cracked open and his mouth tilted upwards in a sleepy grin.

“What happened to ‘it’s too early’?”

“Well,” he says, eyebrows raising and grin fading into a serious look, “’M already awake, aren’t I?”

Leia feels the laugh bubble up her throat and shakes her head, closing her eyes and snaking her arms around his back, pressing her face into the pillow.

“Nuh uh. Far too early.”

“Hmmm,” hums Han, poking her with his own foot under the covers and shifting so that he’s resting on his back again. “What time’s it, anyway?”

Leia makes a face into the pillow and reaches over blindly to scrabble at the surface of the barren bedside table for her chrono. Her fingers catch the clasp; she flops her arm back over to where they’re lying, pushing her hand in the general direction of Han’s face.

He grunts when the chrono hits his nose, reaching up and tugging it from her fingers. She’s just about to slip back into peaceful oblivion when Han groans softly.

“What?”

“’S’not  _ that _ early.”

Leia lifts her face from the pillow to raise an eyebrow at him, looking at the way his eyes are closed determinedly, as though by not looking at the chrono he can make its contents untrue. His hair is sticking up at the front as she’s become so used to, as it always does in the mornings, and she can see the roughness of his chin where he’s not had the time to shave. His lips are pulled back and his eyebrows creased and she wonders why he looks so resigned.

She decides to tease him anyway.

“If you’re  _ that _ eager, flyboy …”

Han’s his lips curl upwards into a grin before his eyes are even open. Leia arches an eyebrow at him. He sighs. She can feel his fingers toying with the ends of her hair around her back.

“Nah, it’s not that. It’s just that I remembered I promised the kids yesterday that I’d take ‘em –”

He’s cut short by the loud pattering of three sets of footsteps, sudden and excited outside the room, and the door bangs open just in time to reveal the footsteps’ three pajama-clad owners, wide awake and belting into the room at full speed.

“WE’RE GONNA GO EXPLORING TODAY!”

Leia has a split second’s chance to brace for impact before three small bodies slam into the springy mattress of their bed, literally bouncing with enthusiasm. She can hear Han’s strangled groan where Jacen’s knees have inevitably landed in his stomach, can hear Jaina’s delighted giggles and cries of, “Exploring exploring exploring!” 

She opens her eyes to see a seven-year-old head of tousled caramel curls poke up from behind her bent knees, gap-toothed grin wide and very awake. Anakin’s bright blue eyes are as big and expressive as ever.

“Can we see the flitters Dad?”

“And the big ole trees with the funky branches!”

“C’mon, Dad, wake up!”

“We can look for old crashed ships in the jungle bits!”

“An’ there’s this funky kinda bug I saw yesterday –”

“You an’ Chewie are gonna be head explorers, Dad, you’re the biggest and Jasa won’t let  _ me _ be head explorer –”

“Only ‘cause we’re both the same age –”

“I’m older!”

“Dad Dad Dad, Uncle Luke says there’s a crashed  _ TIE _ in the jungle, Dad, like all the way from when you an’ him blowed up the Death Star –”

“Are  _ not _ !”

“Am too, by two minutes, tell him Mom I’m older so I should be head explorer!”

“Wake up Dad you promised!”

Leia catches Han’s wide grin right before he snags Jaina around the middle with his arm and tugs her down, growling.

“Your head explorer’s been eaten by the Jungle Monster, kid!”

Jaina shrieks and giggles as she goes down, pinned to her father’s chest, and Jacen yells and dives to her rescue, legs tangling in the bunched up bedsheets as he goes, falling against Han’s side. Leia can feel the laughter escape her throat as she twists so that she’s not kicked by any flying legs and grabs Nik’s skinny ankle as he tries to jump after his siblings, taking pity on the pile of flailing limbs and bodies that is her husband.

Still in his underwear, Nik lets out a high-pitched yell and falls onto his back, bouncing on the mattress and dissolving into giggles as Leia starts tickling the soles of his feet.

“The Jungle Monster and his handler don’t take kindly to wandering explorers!”

“No!” comes Jaina’s dramatic gasp as she squirms against Han’s chest. “No, Jasa, go,  _ save _ yourself!”

“I’LL NEVER LEAVE YOU!” hollers her brother, equally dramatic -- and now that  _ does _ run in this family, doesn’t it -- letting out the equivalent of a war cry; Leia catches the familiar, sly look that flashes in his brown eyes a moment before his small fingers slip under Han’s arm.

Han yelps, jerking his arms upwards as Jacen tickles him. Jaina, crafty as her brother, springs free, tripping in the sheets and landing on Han’s shins.

“ _ Attack! _ ”

“C’mon Jaya, we’ve gottim now!”

Now wide awake, Leia grins as she tugs Nik towards herself and winds her arms around him, peppering his face with kisses and pulling him back down on top of her. “Wait! I’ve got your companion hostage! If you don’t leave my Jungle Monster alone I’ll kiss him to death!”

“Mo- _ om _ !” squeals Anakin, giggling as his eyes and nose and cheeks are showered with his mother’s featherlight kisses. He wriggles in her grasp, round apple cheeks scrunched up and dimpled. From behind him, Jaina and Jacen freeze in their offensive, giving Han a moment to breathe and snag them both around the waists, pulling them down.

“You think you can tickle  _ me _ to death?”

“It was a trap!” moans Jacen between giggles, his face buried in Han’s side. Jaina gives up squirming after only a moment to join in the laughter, pressing her face against Han’s chest.

In Leia’s arms, Nik turns his smiling face to her, eyes wide and framed with thick lashes. She smiles at him, leaning in a bopping his nose with hers, and he giggles and gives her cheek a soft seven-year-old kiss. Leia feels her smile soften.

“What was that for, baby?”

“You feel different, Mommy,” he tells her, putting his arms around her neck and hugging her close, her earlier betrayal forgotten completely.

Leia feels her hands still against his back. “Different?”

“Lighter,” says Nik happily, “like you’re floating in the sky.”

_ You don’t have to forgive me _ , she remembers. But then -- that feeling, like something had untwisted.

Leia pulls her youngest forward and kisses his forehead, barely twitching when his fingers accidentally yank at her long hair in the process. “Mommy’s very happy today.”

“Are you comin’ exploring with us, Mom?” asks Jaina from under Han’s arm and two blankets, her recently-chopped nest of nut-brown hair as tangled and messy as ever, green eyes alight and sparkling and  _ alive _ .

“Yeah!” agrees Jacen, wriggling out of his father’s grasp so he can sit up against Han’s chest and look at her excitedly. Leia can feel the twins’ senses in the Force bubbling and dancing and freer than they’ve been in a while. “Maybe  _ you _ can be head explorer!”

She smiles and takes in her family -- three children browned and rosy-cheeked from their week-long stay with Uncle Luke running rampant around the Temple, Han smiling at her with that knowing look in his green-brown eyes from under Jaina’s feet, hair in disarray and laugh-lines lining his cheeks. 

She can read it in his eyes:  _ Your call, sweetheart.  _

The sounds of Yavin IV’s jungle clamor faintly outside their window and Leia shakes her head, poking Anakin lightly in the side with her fingers.

“ _ I _ ,” she says, “am staying home and making Uncle Luke to help me unpack all of our boxes. You little monsters give your Dad an easy time, alright?”

“Chewie’ll make sure he behaves himself,” says Anakin solemnly, and Leia laughs out loud, nearly drowning out the sound of Han’s disbelieving snort.

“Alright, alright,” he groans over the children’s giggling, “we ain’t goin’ nowhere ‘til Nik puts on some clothes and you two get outta your pajamas.”

“You’ve gotta put clothes on too, Daddy,” says Nik, bouncing in Leia’s lap, and Jaina says, “Dad and Nik are matching!” in an excited voice, nearly falling off the bed.

Leia watches as the three of them parade out of the room, tripping over each other in their eagerness to get dressed and head out, Jacen’s excited gasp of, “We can show Dad our tree fort!” sounding from somewhere outside their bedroom. She’s about to turn to Han and tell him to hurry up getting dressed when he rolls over and pulls her back down against the bed, flashing a teasing grin before kissing her softly.

“Okay,” she says, “now we  _ definitely _ don’t have time.”

“We’ve gotta get locks put on these doors,” he agrees, eyes twinkling. He presses his lips against her cheek. “You’re really happy today.”

“I know.” Smiling back. “I already said that.”

His grin softens, and he says, “I love you,” quick and whispered into her ear before he pushes himself upwards and grabs a pair of pants from the chair at the side of the bed, slipping out of the bedroom and calling after the kids.

“Alright, who’s dressed?”

The children’s excited cries of “Me!” get jumbled together as Leia relaxes into the bed and inhales deeply, closing her eyes and listening to the sounds of the forest outside. 

_ You don’t have to forgive me, _ she thinks again, turning the words over in her head, feeling the Force hum around her with every breath she takes. There’s something different about it today, something  _ easy _ and  _ light _ and  _ soft _ . 

She thinks, lying in their old bed in their new house on this moon that carries so many memories -- that after all these years, something really has changed.


End file.
